#like the culmination of all the trauma done to his hands.... it even visually looks like it.... but at least it looks cool right

[koipalm]

what if ethan winters molded in a witchblade way

[attackfish]

Avatar the Last Airbender, Humor, and Sympathy: Who is it Safe to Laugh at?

A while back I made a vid about Book One Zuko set to Uptown Funk, and as it turns out that vid, and the close attention to the visual language of Zuko in Book One it required is something of a meta mine for me, and led to a greater appreciation for the show's use of dramatic irony: [Link]. That vid got its start as a lighthearted exploration of Book One Zuko as a figure of comedy, but I realized very quickly that I was not going to be able to make the vid about the entirety of Book One, at least not if I wanted it to be purely comedy. Zuko's suffering in book one is funny, right up until it suddenly isn't funny at all. This is not about how we as an audience grow to appreciate Zuko as a character. After all, I came to this vid having watched Avatar: the Last Airbender many times, and already very attached to Zuko to put it mildly. This is about how Zuko's suffering is framed, and how the show switches from playing it for laughs to playing it for pathos: [Link].

This is a common thread throughout the show with many many different characters. What initially is played for laughs about a character is later revealed to have tragic roots. Humor in the Avatar world often has a sting in its tail. This holds true for most of the Gaang: [Link] and for Iroh, but it's at its most obvious, and its most unsettling, with the teenage Fire Nation characters, Azula, Zuko, Mai, and Ty Lee.

Of the four characters mentioned above three have a redemption arc that doubles as a recovery arc, and the one who doesn't has a complete breakdown. All four are victims of abuse. Abuse is a big theme in Avatar: the Last Airbender. and the use of humor to first allow us to laugh at characters' idiosyncrasies before revealing them to be the result of the abuse they suffered ties directly into the shows themes.

And this relationship between humor for the audience and the characters' pain is systematic and consistent. First we get hints of a character's trauma accompanied by scenes of their quirks played for humor, and then, as they approach the culmination (or in Zuko's case a culmination) of their story, their quirks and their trauma are tied together, and suddenly they aren't played for laughs anymore. This pattern reaches its most elaborate and extended variation in Zuko's Book One portrayal. He is introduced to us yelling at his uncle that the avatar has returned and he must capture him, and the desperation pours off him in waves. We are given hints throughout the first half of Book One that Zuko is trying to impress an unloving father and end a humiliating exile, until Chapter Twelve, "The Storm", where Iroh tells Zuko's crew, who are sick of dealing with his mistreatment of them, the story of Zuko's branding and banishment. Until this point, Zuko has been tossed into the snow, had his eye poked until he falls into the water, landed backside up in the snow with his helmet on top of said royal backside, and made a fool of himself in his anger and impulsiveness time and time again. Much of the levity in Book One comes from Zuko playing Yosemite Sam to Aang's cheerful Bugs Bunny, or Sokka's Daffy Duck.

The Looney Toons style humor at Zuko's expense does not disappear at this moment, and Zuko's reckless drive leading to repeated pratfalling isn't tied explicitly to his pain until the Book One finale. There is one last good solid laugh-at-Zuko-being-obnoxious-and-paying-for-it episode, Chapter Fifteen, "Bato of the Water Tribe" between this point and the finale. And yet this moment does mark an important turning point in how the show handles Zuko's status as main season antagonist, and object of ridicule. "Bato of the Water Tribe" is the last episode of the season where Zuko serves as main antagonist, and in fact the last episode of the entire series where he serves this function. And between "The Storm" and "Bato of the Water Tribe" is "The Blue Spirit."

Aside from the heartwrenching rendition of Zuko's backstory, the Storm is full of parallels between Aang and Zuko, including Aang's own painful backstory full of guilt and loss. And because it's Aang telling us this backstory, Aang is in an introspective backward-looking mood at its end, which makes this the perfect time for an episode where Zuko and Aang work together, and which foreshadows their future friendship, and the Fire Nation's own potential for changing course. And the episode following "The Storm" does all of that. "The Blue Spirit" also gives us a taste of Zuko's failure and perpetual futile determination being played for pathos, even as this failure allows for Aang's escape. Indeed, the framing of this situation makes it clear that there is failure on both sides. Zuko is unable to capture Aang, and Aang is rebuffed by Zuko. Zuko's singular pursuit of his goals is shown as tragic, as something that prevents him from forging meaningful connections with other people, and prevents hin from building a life, a concept that will be expanded in Book Two. As an audience, we feel the weight of this moment. It is poignent, it is sad, and it is painful.

"Bato of the Water Tribe" is the only other time we see Zuko until the three Northern Water Tribe episodes, and in these episodes, nearly nothing about Zuko is played for any humor at all. After Zhao takes Zuko's crew, Zuko's relentless drive is portrayed as admirable and tragic. His failures are portrayed as tragic, and even his defeat of Zhao is portrayed as tragic. He captures Aang, and with no one else to talk to, in the middle of a blizzard he can only wait out, he tells Aang about his father and sister, and about how he has to rely on hard work, and how he has come to take pride in his never giving up, because he isn't lucky like his sister. His trauma is now tied to this key part of his personality, previously played for humor, now played for tragedy. The last time we see Zuko in Book One, he confesses to his uncle that he is tired, and stretches out to rest on the raft that his uncle uses to sail them away. The scene is framed in such a way that a viewer might be forgiven for thinking Zuko had died.

After this, Zuko's foibles are played for laughs again throughout the rest of the series, but the Looney Toons style merriment is gone, and the humor is much more affectionate, and used to puncture and punctuate his angst and the heaviness of his storyline. His role as the butt of jokes has been transformed. The point has been made. This change is highlighted by of all characters, Azula. In "The Chase," an episode full of characters laughing at each other and mocking each other in ways that are not funny at all as exhaustion takes its toll and characters show off their worst, meanest selves, Azula's comment to Aang about her brother stands out: "I must find the Avatar to restore my honor!" she says, covering her eye like her brother's scar. And when Aang only stares at her, she continues: "It's okay. You can laugh. It's funny."

How many times have we as a fandom laughed about Zuko and his honor?

And over the course of the rest of Book Two and Book Three, Zuko's sense of honor and his refusal to give up will become his greatest strengths and most admirable qualities as they lead him away from his father and the Fire Nation war machine and to becoming the Firelord who will end the war and restore the honor of his entire nation. The traits that once held him back from making real connections to other people, with healing and understanding of self, become the ones that enable him to make those connections in the end.

This same technique of playing a character's traits born of pain for laughs until they are explicitly tied to that pain is used again with Mai and Ty Lee in Books Two and Three. They are introduced in "Return to Omashu" in ways that also introduce Azula as their abuser, and in Mai's case, give ample information about how neglectful her parents are of her and her brother. However this is done subtly and not dwelt upon. Throughout Books Two and Three, Azula's abuse of the two of them will be touched on and reinforced, most notably in the flashbacks in "Zuko alone. However, most of their portrayals in Book Two will be of them as antagonists, and specifically as funny antagonists. They take this role over from Zuko. Their foibles are played for laughs and they are amusing in a way Azula can't be because she is too much of a threat. It's not until "The Beach" that their quirks are inescapably linked to their traumas, and their bubbly or emotionless exteriors are shown pointedly to be masks hiding pain. Mai yells, Ty Lee cries. And the next time they are given real focus, their pain and their abuse at the hands of Azula is shown to be the source of their triumph as they reject her domination and turn against her to protect the people they love. Mai especially is cool and collected, mask firmly in place as she tells Azula that she miscalculated. The parts of their personalities born of pain are first played for laughs, then for tragedy, then for triumph, just like Zuko's.

Azula in so many ways is the outlier, because for her, the triumph comes first. She appears to be in control at the start of her journey, winning victory after victory, playing with Mai, Ty Lee, and Zuko like dolls. I mentioned earlier that Azula isn't played for humor very much in Book Two the way Zuko was because she is too big a threat. She's too scary to laugh at. This changes in "The Beach." Taken away from the battlefield and forced to interact with strangers in which there is no hierarchy putting her at the top or competition for her to win, the same traits that make her such a dangerous opponent make her laughably incompetent at social interaction.

At the end of "The Beach", we are given a hint of the pain at the roots of the same perfectionism and need to win that this episode lampoons: "I could sit here and complain how our mom liked Zuko more than me, but I don't really care. My own mother thought I was a monster. She was right, of course, but it still hurt."

We will later learn this is far from the whole truth. Not only does her own subconscious tell her that her mother loved her, but her whole world starts to fall apart when, somebody, Mai, picks Zuko over her, and tells her she miscalculated. Last of all, her father, who always treated her as his perfect child in contrast to worthless Zuko, dismisses her and treats her with the scorn usually reserved for Zuko, something Azula notes explicitly, when she yells that: "You can't treat me like Zuko!"

This is one of the most telling lines in the entire series. She has built her self image around being better than Zuko, of being infallable, because the little girl watching her brother being abused thought this would protect her from her father. And now, with her sense of infallibility stripped away, the idea that she is inherently better than Zuko called into question, and her father's favor suddenly in doubt, her whole identity crumbles and she starts hallucinating [Link]. And this is why Azula sees her mother in her psychosis, because Ursa is someone else who she feels chose Zuko over her. While Zuko, Mai, and Ty Lee end the show free of their abusers and ready to start new lives, Azula ends it chained, defeated, and sobbing uncontrollably.

And yet with Azula's arc, as with Zuko, Mai and Ty Lee's, an explicit line is drawn between the funny and the tragic about a character. The writers, strictly speaking, didn't need to make us laugh at Azula before turning her into an object of pity. Taking her from triumph to tragedy would have been a strong enough individual arc without the segue into the hilarious. This segue however, together with Zuko, Mai, and Ty Lee's time spent as objects of humor, ties strongly into the show's themes and evokes a common emotional response. The humor comes before the revelation of tragedy in all four cases because before the tragedy of each character is made explicit, it feels okay to laugh at them. It doesn't feel mean.

But then the tragedy behind the funny quirks is revealed and we the audience can't help remember laughing at them. And we already have laughed at them. There's nothing we can do now to undo that. And this makes us feel just a little bit mean, just a little bit guilty. It makes us a participatory character in a way, and it drives home an important theme. There is no one safe to laugh at on Avatar: the Last Airbender. Everybody is human so no one is just a figure of fun. And just as in the real world, you never know when you are laughing at somebody's pain. Everybody is human, and everybody's pain is worthy of respect and acknowledgment, and you should be wary of anyone saying: "You can laugh. It's funny."

[blapisblogs]

So somehow Corey Taylor has now ended up in the place where I’m assuming the other Nostalgia Critic episodes take place, which has all these parody posters of previous Nostalgia Critic reviews and Doug Walker’s YouTube plaques on the walls. Doug, you spent a majority of at least the first half of this “review” beating us over the head with how much you hate Roger Waters’s ego, but then you show us shots like this and expect people to not comment on yours? Of course there is a very slight chance that this might’ve been an attempt at self-deprecation, showing that Doug is aware that “Nostalgia Critic” has just as much of an ego as Waters and he’s just oblivious to it, but given how the rest of this “review” is and how Doug has reportedly acted behind the scenes on other projects, I highly doubt it.

Now you’d think that with Corey Taylor here and the “review” being nearly over that this would be the part where he finally says something, especially since we’re close to one of the few times we hear Bob Geldof sing in the film. You’d be wrong. Before Doug can finish whatever speech he had planned for this part, he answers a call from... some dude asking about the whereabouts of someone called Lucy Lacemaker. Oh boy... So something I’ve been mostly ignoring is that there’s a strange creature that’s popped up briefly a few times throughout the “review”. That creature is Lucy Lacemaker, the creation of someone called Fennah, making a guest appearance in this review because... uh... The Wall had weird animated characters in it? That’s what Lucy starts talking about: how the animated characters’ designs were creative but the characters themselves were terribly underused (“All paint, no ink” as she puts it). If you’ve actually seen the film, then you know that this criticism doesn’t make sense. The animated characters and creatures in The Wall aren’t exactly characters in and of themselves; they’re figments of Pink’s imagination that are either meant to symbolize things (i.e. the black eagle in “Goodbye Blue Sky” being the Nazis who did aerial bombings on England), purposefully one-dimensional caricatures of real people in Pink’s life who’ve damaged him (his overprotective mother, his cheating wife, the abusive schoolmaster), or sometimes even how he sees himself in that moment (the mostly inanimate doll and possibly Judge Worm). They aren’t the main focus of the film or album because the focus is Pink and his internal struggles. (I was gonna say “That’d be like saying that Tamatoa should’ve been the main character of Moana when the film is about Moana”, but... no, that would still make more sense because at least Tamatoa is an actual character in that film and not a figment of someone’s imagination, despite what some grimdark edgelord fan theories say.)

Anyway, it fades to... some sort of alternate universe or dimension or something? Whatever, Doug’s now in this world of weirdos who sing about what they think of the film? I guess? This is a “parody” of “The Trial”, the climax of the film where Pink mentally, well, puts himself on trial for “showing feelings” and culminates in him making himself “tear down the wall”, allowing himself to feel and move on from his trauma. On the one hand I get the most basic line of logic for this “parody” (“The Trial had weird animated creatures, so therefore this parody of it should have weird animated creatures”), but this looks and feels so out of place here. I mean, if these creatures were in a video about Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland movies I wouldn’t bat an eye at it, but for a video about The Wall it feels so wrong. It gets worse when you know that the animated characters in The Trial all have connections to Pink whereas these characters are from a completely different creator with no ties to Doug Walker at all (or even Corey Taylor, who, you know, is supposed to be standing in for Pink). It’s not like Doug doesn’t have characters of his own or that they couldn’t fill in the spaces of the people in The Trial if he wanted to (Chester A. Bum, Devil Boner, Hyper Fangirl, The Devil, Charts Guy, Bill, etc.), so the lack of using them for this and instead using characters from something completely unrelated to his show made by someone completely unrelated to his crew makes it feel impersonal, which is the exact opposite of what The Trial did. It needs to be personal in order for it to have the proper impact on Pink (or whoever’s standing in for him in this case), so removing that element from it takes away a lot of the punch.

I don’t want to be too harsh on this sequence because I know a lot of people have given Fennah guff over it (and supposedly they didn’t take the backlash regarding their part in it very well), but even with how out-of-place it is I have to admit the animation isn’t too bad, especially given that this was all done in about two and a half weeks. Oh yeah, according to Fennah, Doug Walker only gave them about two and a half weeks to do all this animation, which is half of what it normally takes for him to make something like this. What the fuck, Doug? You claim that you worked on this “review” for at least two months (not that it shows) and you only gave Fennah two and a half weeks to animate their parts? I guess I shouldn’t be surprised given how much you overworked your former associates on the set of To Boldly Flee, but I guess you really didn’t learn anything from that. I mean, the least you could’ve done was try to react a little more to all these weird creatures and places you found yourself in for no reason, yet your acting is somehow worse than the performances in other animation-live action hybrid movies you’ve criticized in the past.

But enough of all that, let’s look at the lyrics for this parody of one of my favorite parts from both the album and film. Because fuck me, we’re almost done.

[Lyrics (and snark) below the cut]

[Note: I don’t know anything about Fennah, their webshow Satellite City, or anything else they do; the only character name I know is Lucy’s, so the rest of these are gonna be very crappy physical descriptions. Apologies in advance for that.]

Someone vaguely like Lucy I guess but way bigger and with horns: Right then, Lucy Lacemaker, The court will take a vote On if the film that plays before us Can in any way show some feelings, Ruddy feelings of an almost canny nature From joys to blues

[Lady, if you and these other characters wanted to do a comprehensive analysis of The Wall, then you should’ve done it way sooner and not in the last seven to eight minutes of someone else’s video, let alone the video of someone who doesn’t even really analyze it themselves.]

Five-armed scarecrow motherfucker: I always said I like a well-made ditty

[Well you’re not going to be hearing any of that in this video, dude. Edit: So I thought this said “I always said I like to wear me titty”, which of course makes no sense, but according to another video, these are the actual words. It makes more sense, but that’s still what I hear whenever I stumble upon a video talking about this.]

I will not suffer shitty Fools that bring forth Naught but pity For their lack of wit and wild

[Jesus christ, is this yet another jab at Roger Waters?! I got enough of that from Doug Walker beating it into everyone’s skulls for the last half-hour, I don’t need to hear it from whoever the hell this is too.]

But here we rather find The result of heart and artist I say the music here is joyous!

[At this point I can’t even tell if this is supposed to be a genuine compliment or a backhanded one.]

But with that, we have to say

Black, spiky, horned demon goat thing: Lazy Left in the attic We’re not crazy Constantly dreaming I just wish they’d give us some more time to live

[How is the film not being about you “lazy”? Are you even talking about this film specifically, or just movies with underused cool-looking creatures in general? Also, this seems pretty ironic given that each of these characters (with the exception of Lucy) only get maybe a few seconds of screentime in this “review”.]

Horned kangaroo lizard titty monster with no pants: Lazy, Constantly (???) as being lazy

[This is the one most everyone points to when they talk about the lyrics being unintelligible, and I don’t blame them because I’ve seen this part multiple times and still can’t fully figure out what she’s saying. Also, I’m sorry Fennah, but somebody’s gotta say it: the lip-syncing here is awkward at best.]

Multi-horned Christmas goat motherfucker: Those little shits They’ve done it now We all deserve personalities They could’ve used us Far more often than they did, But no! They had to go their own way

[Again, this film’s not about the weird creatures for a reason: they’re not the focus because they aren’t real in the context of the film and the focus is Pink and his personal struggles. If you want animated characters with creative designs that have more screentime and development, then I have no clue what made you think you’d get it from this film out of all the other animated media out there. Not every animation-live action hybrid movie is trying to be Who Framed Roger Rabbit (especially not this one since it came out years before Roger Rabbit did).]

We’re bored of Alice! We want the Hatter

[Okay, credit where it’s due, I like this tiny bit here by itself. I definitely don’t think it works as a “criticism” of The Wall, but it’s decently creative in a way.]

Just five minutes more, your honor, Them and us alone

Blue Skyrim-looking dragon: Wait! This film’s not bound by characters It’s a visual affair It never aimed to tell a story

[Were you watching the same film that everyone else was, or are you somehow confusing it with the “review” you’re currently in? The film does have characters and does tell a story, and I think it does a pretty decent job at it (even better than the album I’d argue), unlike this “review” which tries to have a narrative but becomes less and less cohesive as it drags on.]

Rather sprawling canvas of Emotion visual splendor And your honor, we can take that home

[Take what home? I don’t even know what your argument is supposed to be here. This just sounds like word salad at this point.]

Tall Sean Connery-sounding werewolf in a striped robe: Maybe There’s more to the picture Just maybe Both sides of the wall

[...Nobody in this “review” actually knows what “The Wall” that the film and album are talking about is supposed to be, do they?]

Sean Connery-sounding werewolf and white lizard thing: There’s a difference between nonsense, after all That and Creation

Mutated cow monster thing on a moon surrounded by jellyfish: Genius and nonsense And creation

[Okay, again, credit where it’s due: the lip-sync for this thing is awkward, but this is the only person or thing in this “review” with a genuinely pleasant and clear singing voice. Shame that she only gets two or three short lines, one of which she has with the previous duo.]

Lucy Lacemaker: The evidence before the court is Incontrovertible There’s no need for the jury to retire In all my years of judging, I have never seen before

[With the exception of one word in that last part, Lucy’s whole bit here is completely lifted from the original. Some of these were already cutting it close to the original’s, but this is just straight up copying it. I don’t know who wrote this part of the “review” (I’ve gotten conflicting information on whether it was Doug or Fennah who wrote this particular parody), but whoever it was, you’ve got some nerve to have characters call the film “lazy” only to later turn around and do this.]

A film so deserving Of both love and wanting more The way it makes you tougher, Makes you think and feel but suffer, Fills me with the urge to decapitate

[Go on, Lucy! Off with his head! Edit: I guess here’s as good a point as any to point out that, at least according to TV Tropes, Lucy is a lesbian who likes to murder people, so apparently that’s supposed to be funny. ...Yeah, no, it’s not. Fuck you, TV Tropes.]

I believe this film is packed

[I’m being generous in assuming she said “packed” at least, because it sound like she’s saying “hacked” but that doesn’t really make sense. Then again this whole bit in this “review” doesn’t really make sense when it comes down to it.]

With much to be revered But the marvelous creatures Should be adored As opposed to being feared

[...You mean you want people to love the animated creatures based on literal abusers and Nazis?]

Tear down the wall!

[What wall?! In the context of this ���review” there is no wall! Even if the context here is that there’s a “wall” between nightmarish fantasy and reality, then Lucy and/or Fennah already broke it offscreen before this whole number started. Or are you talking about the film/album The Wall? If that’s the case, then why are you demanding that Doug Walker tear it down when he was already doing that long before you showed up? What did Doug have to do with any of this? What the hell happened to Corey Taylor during all this?! Why did I waste so much time writing all this down?! Why did I do this to myself?! WHY?!]

[doomonfilm]

Thoughts : Watchmen [HBO, Episodes 4-6] (2019)

After the initial three episodes, HBO’s immaculate continuation of Watchmen had me hooked.  Now that we’re two-thirds through the run of season one, I’m willing to say with near certainty that Watchmen is top tier original content from HBO.  With each question that is answered, we are presented with information that raises even more intriguing questions.  Full disclosure, I’ve started this blog entry prior to episode six because episodes four and five had such a strong impact on me, requiring multiple viewings and deep dives into both before I ever put eyes on what looked to be an amazing episode centered around Sister Night’s family connections.

THE STORY CONTINUED

Episode 04 : If You Don’t Like My Story, Write Your Own Sister Night breaks into the Greenwood Cultural Center moments before her van is dropped out of the sky right in front of Special Agent Laurie Blake.  In an effort to cover up her involvement with Will, Sister Night cleans her shop and chops the wheelchair into enough pieces to fit into a gym bag, but during her disposal of the bag, a mysterious masked man witnesses the drop.  Sister Night gives chase, but the mysterious man escapes into the sewer.    A quick investigation reveals that the van was likely lifted into the air by one of Lady Trieu’s (Hong Chau) flying vehicles, and the pair pay her a visit at the Millenium Clock, where the mysterious trillionaire provides the pair with requested information.  Sister Night inquires about Will’s whereabouts to Lady Trieu, who is later revealed to be in league with Will in hopes of exacting an as of yet unknown plan.  After a night of killing all of his helpers, Ozymandias begins the process of trying to escape his imprisonment after fishing new helpers out of the nearby lake and growing them.   

Episode 06 : Little Fear of Lightning Looking Glass is revealed to have been in Hoboken, New Jersey on 11/2/1985, the day that the giant squid landed on Madison Square Garden in Manhattan, killing hundreds instantly (including world famous band Pale Horse) and hundreds more in the ensuing psychic wave emitted before the squid’s death.  As a direct survivor of such a profound event, Glass leads an isolated existence, with much of his life anchored to a fascination with the squid and a fear of similar psychic waves.  This very fascination and fear leaves him vulnerable to both Special Agent Laurie Blake’s influence and the plans of the Seventh Kalvary, which in turn impacts Sister Night.  Ozymandias is revealed to be on Jupiter as he manages to get a message out to an unidentified satellite.

Episode 07 : This Extraordinary Being Shortly after discovering that Will’s pills were long-outlawed Nostalgia before admitting to covering up Will’s possible involvement in Police Chief Crawford’s death, Sister Night is arrested by Special Agent Laurie Blake.  Just before being accosted, Sister Night manages to swallow the entire contents of the bottle of Nostalgia.  Through a series of immersive memories that Angela is implanted into, we learn about young Will Reeves (Jovan Adepo), his time as a New York City cop in 1938, his connections to Captain Metropolis (Jake McDorman) and the original Minutemen, and the mysterious KKK-connected origins of a secret society known as the Cyclops.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

The Peteypedia : A weekly collection of documents relevant to the world of Watchmen, similar to the opening and closing inclusions in the original comic issues and graphic novel.

The Official Watchmen Podcast : Host Craig Mazin and showrunner Damon Lindelof discuss the HBO Watchmen series.  A new podcast episode will be released after episodes six and nine.

THOUGHTS ON THE SHOW

This show continues to be brilliant, giving us a handful of questions with each answer that is revealed, and at the end of episode 6, dropping a canon-altering bomb that re-contextualizes all that we’ve thought we previously understood about the origin of heroes in the Watchmen world.  Parallel to this, we are shown (for the first time) events in the Watchmen world that were previously only presented to us in comic form, drawing an exact and direct line between the source material and the character of Looking Glass.  The levels of easter eggs are starting to hit like the Inception storyline as new elements and old elements are folded together with ever continuing juxtaposition of an uncanny valley-esque 2019 that contains very futuristic materials sprinkled few and far between, all meant to hearken back to the latest trauma exacted upon the citizens of the Watchmen world.

Lady Trieu clearly holds extreme power in this world, and is key to the narrative, but her cards thus far have been played close to the chest.  Her connections to Will Reeves seem to be deep, but if the key information to this connection has already been presented, it was done so in secrecy.  Her logo permeates the entire series, appearing to the level of common commercial logos that we have become desensitized to in our personal experiences.  The origins of her daughter seem mysterious, and the promise she presents of a master plan has me intrigued.

We know that Adrian Veidt is stuck on Europa by someone who has yet to be revealed, and we know that his master plan is an SOS message in the form of the many versions of Mr. Phillips and Ms. Crookshanks that he has catapulted outside the barrier he is captured within.  The origins of these helpers is revealed in a way that does nothing to comfort our thirst for answers, and the nature of his captivity (as well as the identity of his jailer) is still one of the biggest unanswered questions in the series.

Tim Blake Nelson continues to put on a clinic with his performance as Looking Glass (though, to be fair, many members of the main cast are running on all cylinders in terms of performance).  His direct connection to the culminating events of the original Watchmen comic are revealed, which in turn unveils a well of information about the manner in which he lives his post-traumatic life.  For a character so deeply rooted in truth, the way that his entire worldview is shattered without one lie being told to him is as heartbreaking as it is masterful.

What is Joe Keane’s endgame in regards to his connections to the Seventh Kalvary and the intrinsic field generator that they possess?  It is hard to ignore the parallels between the Seventh Kalvary adopting the visage of Rorschach’s masked vigilantism and Keane’s legislation to turn the cops into masked vigilantes (eventually on a nationwide level), and it makes me wonder how many of them are playing both sides, if any.

After the Watchmen film chose to alter the ending, I wondered if we’d ever get to see the Giant Squid event in a visual medium.  Not only did we get to see what has now been dubbed as 11/2 in a stunning opening scene, but the way that it has been contextualized into the idea of a multi-generational trauma works very well.  I really enjoyed the allusion to Schindler’s List that was used to describe the in-world film Pale Horse, and I would love to see even just the clip mentioned in episode 5.

If episode 1 ruffled some feathers, then the internet is going to have a field day with the direct origin story given to the previously origin story-less Hooded Justice.  There has been speculation since episode 1 that Will Reeves was the true identity of the first hero in the Watchmen canon, the man who inspired the Minutemen, but going full fledged with this is a brave move.  The episode in which this information was revealed is a subtle visual effects masterpiece, and hopefully it will get recognition come seasonal awards time.

THE QUESTIONS

- Where did Cal disappear to during the White Night?  How in league is he with Special Agent Blake, who continuously brings him up to taunt Angela, and even uses him in hopes to bring Angela back from her Nostalgia overdose?  Why does he, at times, seem so cold and detached for a character that professes he doesn’t like to lie?

- Who was the man in all silver?  Is that Agent Petey?  Is this how he gathers his intelligence, does Special Agent Blake know about these exploits if so, and has he been in the background of other events in this world?

- How mad is Alan Moore going to be at the alteration of the Hooded Justice legacy and lineage?  How mad will the fandom be at the idea that the Tulsa Riots were a heavy source of inspiration to the character, as well as systematic racism within the NYPD?  Will the idea of the Cyclops and mesmerism being used as a direct cause of black on black violence nationwide be shunned as a narrative device, and will the obvious allusions to Birth of a Nation be overlooked?

- How deep is Lady Trieu involved in all of the events we have seen thus far?  How connected is she to Dr. Manhattan, if at all?

- How is time moving for Adrian Veidt in relation to time on Earth, and when/how will all of these threads connect?